


love and let go

by 10softbot



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Falling Out of Love, Light Angst, Lovers to Friends, M/M, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:41:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25214065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/10softbot/pseuds/10softbot
Summary: Taeyong thinks people should talk about the concept of falling out of love more often.
Relationships: Lee Taeyong/Nakamoto Yuta
Comments: 37
Kudos: 117





	love and let go

Sometimes Taeyong wonders when things started to change. He wonders if there was a tipping point for the both of them, where he and Yuta looked at each other and stopped recognizing the person standing before them. He wonders when the cute things started becoming ugly, when the quirkiness became annoying, when patience started wearing so thin it eventually ran out.

Taeyong thinks people should talk about the concept of falling out of love more often.

He thinks he can still remember the day they stopped saying good morning, when having meals together no longer seemed necessary, when there was no goodbye being said before either were out the front door for the day. He can definitely remember when they first slept with their backs turned to each other without having fought – he wonders if that was the tipping point.

Lately, it feels like he is watching his life go by through the eyes of someone else.

Taeyong wakes up one night to an empty bed next to him, to light coming from the hallway and light footsteps walking around. He finds Yuta in the guest bedroom, hanging some of his clothes in the wardrobe, laptop open on the desk by the window. Taeyong asks him what he is doing, and Yuta’s only answer is a long stretch of silence that Taeyong can still hear when he goes back to bed and falls asleep again.

He doesn’t think either of them are to blame for how things turned out to be. It seems that it was just the natural course of things – they loved until they couldn’t, and that is how it has been. The weirdest thing, he thinks, is that neither of them are unhappy about it.

Sad, of course, but not unhappy.

He doesn’t think love has an expiry date, but he wishes someone would have told him sooner that sometimes forever doesn’t really last forever. Forever sometimes comes to an end, and then you have to pick up your things and move on to the next one.

He wishes he would have realized sooner that you can still love someone while no longer being in love with them.

Taeyong loves Yuta, as a friend but not a lover, and he hopes Yuta feels the same about him.

Loving someone means wishing them well and knowing when it is time to let go.

Taeyong knows it is time to let go when Yuta gets home one day and says he's going back home. _To Osaka,_ he says, voice quiet, not quite looking Taeyong in the eyes. And while Taeyong feels sad, his heart clenching in his chest, all he can do is wrap his arms around him and say it’s okay, that it is time to go.

Yuta cries as he packs his bags, Taeyong cries as he watches from the hallway. Four years and too many memories later, he doesn’t know how to deal with how empty the apartment feels without the person who had been his other half for so long.

That night, Taeyong falls asleep on the cold living room floor.

With no more boisterous laughter to fill up the empty space, Taeyong knows it is time to move on.


End file.
